[Music]
in the early 1900s the russian empire
was ruled by a single man tsar nicholas
ii who exercised complete control over
every aspect of the country the
population of russia was poor stupid and
hungry and wouldn't look out of place in
any time period in the past 1 000 years
in 1914 the russian empire declared war
in germany starting a long painful war
characterized by the age-old russian
tactic of swamping the enemy with troops
and hoping for the best after the first
year of the war nearly everyone who was
in the russian army by the start of the
war had been killed or wounded food
shortages were rampant soldiers began to
mutiny and everyone was just generally
sick of the war eventually the people
decided they had had enough and
overthrew the government forcing the
tsar to abdicate and hand over power to
a provisional government meanwhile in
switzerland this dude vladimir lenin
looked at this and thought that the time
was now for a continent-wide communist
revolution what is communism well in the
shortest possible way rich people
exploit poor people so poor people
should overthrow rich people and take
control of the country and then
eventually countries money war
inequality hunger and poverty will all
cease to exist so lenin got on a train
to russia to take over the country and
the germans just let him do it for the
bans when he gets to rush he tells all
of his communist buddies in the
bolshevik party that the time to take
control is now the provisional
government had scheduled elections for
november 1917. hang on thought lenin and
the bolsheviks the provisional
government has about as much legitimacy
as we do because nobody elected them but
if they hold and win an election then
they have legitimacy and we don't have
any legal arguments take over the
country so what if we launched a coup
and took over the provisional government
before the elections can be held and
then hold the elections so then we have
legitimacy
delightfully devilish lenin so they did
and then they held the elections and
lost them coming a distant second place
to uh
the provisional government
[Music]
well we tried time to take over the
country by force so they did and a lot
of people really understandably annoyed
at this and so formed a coalition called
the white army made up of provisional
government supporters socialists social
democrats capitalists and even people
who wanted the tsar back sucks for them
because in 1918 the bolsheviks had him
taken into a basement in shot this
coalition went to war with the
bolsheviks in an attempt to regain
control over the country and were helped
along the way by britain in the usa this
wasn't enough however as by 1922 the
rule of the bolshevik or communist party
had been cemented with all that out of
the way it was time to fix russia union
of soviet socialist republics
lenin's top economists drew up an idea
called new economics where the
government will take 50 of what you
produce and redistribute it to society
and then you can sell the rest or keep
it or whatever i don't care half of the
party think that this was a good idea
and should basically be communism but
the other half thought that it should
only be kept in place until a more
communist or idea could be found
thankfully both sides are united by
lenin so they'll just do whatever he oh
[ __ ] he's dead
so now we have to elect a new leader and
there are a bunch of candidates but
everyone knows it's gonna be this guy
leon trotsky who was lenin's right-hand
man for most of the revolution trotsky
was part of the new economics is cool
and hype team and wanted to push for
other countries around the world to
become communist however this guy joseph
stalin is the exact opposite who thought
that new economics was uncool and wanted
to focus on communism in russia before
spreading it around the world and
surprise stalin wins and then he had all
of his opponents exiled and executed
with complete supreme control over the
party stalin now needed complete supreme
control of the country why not do what
the tsar did and keep the population too
stupid and poor to rebel against you
wait no that made him lose a war in his
life what if we killed everyone and i
mean literally everyone who we suspect
could do anything less than show their
complete eternal loyalty to me
personally and then ban non-communists
from elections and then ban freedom of
expression and then ban religion and
free movement and abortion and same-sex
relationships and art stalin said that
the soviet union was 50 to 100 years
behind the rest of europe in terms of
social and political developments and if
they didn't shape up quickly then the
other western powers would be able to
steamroll them in a war so the ussr
embarked a rapid modernization plan
known as the five-year plans the plans
organized every aspect of the economy
down to the last worker and each
five-year plan focused on a different
sector of the economy the first two
plans went swimmingly aside from a
couple genocides in ukraine
the soviet union went from a rural
feudal economy to a full industrial
power halfway through the third plan
however stalin noticed that germany was
getting a bit too touchy for his liking
and might be ready to start a war which
the ussr wouldn't be ready for until at
least 1945.
the soviet foreign minister this word
molotov met with german foreign minister
johan von ribentrop and signed a deal
where they would both invade poland
together and then be neutral with each
other
so in september 1939 they did indeed
invade poland and occupied it entirely
thankfully germany took all the blame
for this and started a war on the wrong
side of europe phew that's brought us
some time to prepare so long as we don't
get invaded we should be ready for war
in 1945. yeah you know where this is
going
eventually the ussr is able to push back
the axis all the way to berlin on the
way to germany the uss stopped off to
liberate all of eastern europe of nazi
rule and set up elections so that these
countries could decide their own future
what a surprise they all vote
overwhelmingly to become soviet-aligned
communist satellite states why would
they do that the united states who
hadn't really cared about the ussr until
now was quite alarmed by this and so
took a policy of containment to make
sure the soviets didn't spread communism
any further they even spent several
months defending their bit of berlin
from a soviet blockade by flying in
supplies this is the start of the cold
war where russia and the usa tried to
outdo each other in all aspects of
everything and try to prove that their
respective system was the best in
military size strength number of
satellite states economy secret
intelligence quality of life sports
science cinema chess anything you can
think of really the soviet union began
to fund communist rebellions in uprising
across the world which sometimes work
and sometimes didn't in 1949 the soviet
union developed their first atomic bomb
putting their military on par with the
americans of course neither side used
the bombs as this would result in the
death of all life on earth so it's best
just to continue with the international
waving contest rather than actually
fighting and then suddenly stalin died
after having a stroke and pissing
himself so he was replaced by nikita
khrushchev one of stalin's closest
advisers and former governor of ukraine
back home the number of soviet deaths in
this period decreased dramatically and
after one last famine in 1948 the ussr
didn't experience any more famines or
mass purges in fact the cia report from
the 1970s stated that the caloric intake
of the average soviet citizen was only
slightly lower or even on par with the
average american furthermore the poverty
rate in the ussr of 20
is only just above the usa's current
rate of 19.5 khrushchev said that
communism would be implemented by the
1980s and this whole soviet union
nonsense was just a transitional measure
and people seem to accept that it seems
if you just put an early access sticker
on something that isn't finished people
will still buy into it in the meantime
the soviet government under christian
built tons of apartment blocks meant to
be temporary housing until communism
could become real and then everyone
would live in really nice modular homes
as of 2019 there are still thousands of
them all around the former soviet union
and in places like latvia 66 of the
population still live in them because
the soviet economy was so middling the
soviet government tried to show it was
better than capitalism by instead
leading the exploration of the space
frontier soviet art and literature had a
real fetish for space exploration
thinking that when communism was
achieved on earth humanity could branch
out and explore the universe using
stolen german rocket technology the
soviets were able to launch a satellite
into space in 1957 which relayed a
series of beeps to prove it had got
there this initiated what is known as
the space race unlike the usa where all
the scientists were unified the soviet
government tried to play their rocket
scientists against each other in order
to increase competition and achieve fast
results this partially worked as the
ussr was the first to send a dog into
space followed by a man and a woman and
then they were trying to get to the moon
when the usa burst in and got there
first but an impressive record
nonetheless in 1962 the soviet
government began building missile silos
on the newly communist island of cuba
which alarmed the usa because while the
u.s had missile capabilities to hit any
part of the ussr the ussr did not yet
have the ability to do the same to the
us
so the americans set up a naval blockade
around cuba and told the soviets that
they're going to inspect everything that
comes through for nukes and if not
they're going to shoot them so in order
to stop nuclear war from not being not a
thing the soviets said okay we'll just
stop giving cuban nukes if you stop
giving italy and turkey nukes and the us
said oh
okay and everyone whose lives depended
on the u.s and soviet union not being
idiots all believed the collective side
relief
by 1964 excessive spending on foreign
wars in the space race and a system that
didn't generate wealth meant that the
soviet economy ground to a halt for the
next 20 years all in all the soviet
union's economy was only around the size
of italy the new soviet leader leonid
brezhnev sought more peaceful relations
with the united states so they didn't
have to spend as much on the military in
1972 they signed the salt agreement
limiting the number of nukes each one of
them was allowed to build and keep
it seemed that proxy wars and nuclear
tension with the usa was coming to a
close one of the ussr's final military
inventions came when they invaded
afghanistan in the 1980s in response the
usa and other western powers boycotted
the 1980 moscow olympics meaning the
soviet and east germans just won every
event interestingly still on drugs
though in response the soviet union
boycotted the 1984 u.s olympics
afghanistan was essentially a russian
version of the americans in vietnam as
the war was a complete failure and the
troops had to be pulled out
and now a bit about chernobyl because i
couldn't fit it into any other part of
the script to keep up with the energy
demands of the vast empire the
government had been investing more in
nuclear power building nuclear power
plants all over the country however they
were all poorly run leading to a certain
nuclear facility in pripyat to blow its
top and spew radiation everywhere
initially the government tried to cover
it up because the glorious soviet
dictatorship of the proletariat was
incapable of making mistakes but when a
power plant in sweden began showing
signs of unhealthy levels of radiation
the rest of the world tagged on that
something wasn't quite right the area
surrounding the plant was evacuated and
the area remains uninhabitable until the
230th century
after leonid brezhnev and a bunch of
other soviet leaders died mikhail
gorbachev became the soviet chairman
gorbachev decided it was time to stop
mucking around with this state
capitalism nonsense and finally commit
to making communism real there are two
ways he could do this number one making
the government more transparent and
accessible to the average joe and two
rebuilding the government and economy so
that it's actually a bit more communist
so for the first point they made it
legal to make criticisms of the
government which there were a lot
they also legalized western media
listening
then for the second bit they made the
leader of the ussr an actual elected
president instead of whoever was the
communist party chairperson and then
made capitalism legal in certain
scenarios provided the businesses were
run by the workers who worked there
which means mixed soviets were created
and russians were allowed to eat
glorious western fast food then
gorbachev organized the first free
elections in soviet history allowing
non-communists to become representatives
boris yeltsin a pro-capitalism kind of
guy was soon elected president of russia
this really annoyed hardline stalinists
so they kidnapped gorbachev and tried to
set up an interim government to restore
order it's time for yeltsin to save the
day not because he particularly liked
gorbachev but because he wanted to be
the one to stage the coup instead so he
did and russia ukraine and belarus all
declared independence from the ussr and
then so did latvia lithuania estonia
kurdistan uzbekistan
turkmenistan tajik okay so basically
everyone tried to declare independence
from the ussr except kazakhstan so for
about five days the ussr looked like
this
his hands tied gorbachev signed a
document officially dissolving the
soviet union and on december 25th 1991 a
christmas miracle happened and the
soviet union was dissolved
then everyone was all happy and
capitalist and everything was great oh
wait never mind there was inflation and
food shortage but at least gorbachev got
his pizza hut commercial
[Music]
sometimes nothing brings people together
like a nice hot pizza from pizza
[Music]